When I’m told that gamers don’t want to play as female protagonists, I get mad.

I am not a teenage girl, nor have I ever had the chance to experience life as a teenage girl. It is not something I understand, nor likely that I ever fully will.

But I am also not a space marine, or a pilot, or a centuries old assassin. How game makers decided that these experiences were somehow more desirable or palatable to play than others defies belief.

So it’s refreshing, then, to see The Fullbright Company’s first game Gone Home offer up an experience that is so startlingly, unexpectedly and enjoyably different than anything else on the market right now.

In Gone Home, the year is 1995, and you are Kaitlin Greenbriar, a 20-year-old woman who has just returned home after a year spent travelling Europe – except home is different than the one you left behind.

Your family has moved to a whole new town, into a house owned by your now-deceased uncle, meaning home doesn’t just feel different, it is physically, geographically different too.

But when you arrive home from the airport in the midst of a thunderstorm, shortly after 1 A.M., you find that home is different in another way too – namely, that you are the only one there.

Why is the house empty, and where did your family go? In Gone Home, you spend the next few hours – largely via the narrative of your younger teenage sister – piecing together the requisite clues.

This is a game for the curious – those who relish the opportunity to explore every box, every nook, every passage and cranny inside a virtual environment. You can pick up and examine boxes of tissues, magazines and potato chips left strewn throughout the house, with the ability to turn each item over in your hands.

Many of these objects are but fragments, ephemera of daily living with little bearing on the story that’s being told – but some offer hints and scant details of a larger story that exists just beyond the fore.

What’s fascinating about the way Gone Home relies upon this clue finding mechanic to advance the progress of the game is that, as part of the narrative, it actually makes sense.

The Fullbright Company

While in other games, the act of rooting through drawers and cupboards can feel like a chore, there’s actually a point to all of this rummaging in Gone Home. With no one else to the point the way, the house is the only clue you have – and as this is a new house you’ve never seen, it’s only natural you’d want to explore.

The house is steeped in 1990s nostalgia – a sign we’re far enough removed from the alt-rock decade that its depiction no longer looks passably present day. VHS tapes of movies recorded off the TV litter the house, with Airplane! and Moonraker, back-to-back, alongside episodes of The X-Files. There’s white whicker furniture, magic eye pictures and feminist zines. You can play cassette tapes from influential early-90s riot girl bands Heavens to Betsy, Bratmobile and The Youngins.

They’re not just there for aesthetics, either. They lend authenticity, and make the experience feel more real.

As anyone who has been away from their family or childhood home for an appreciable amount of time can attest, the return is as much about you as it is the people you’ve left behind – except, in this case, there’s no one around to fill in the blanks. All that’s left is the journal of your 17-year-old sister, Sam.

Sam used to tell you everything, she says, but in your absence, she’s confided in a series of notes instead. Though you’re the one returning home, it soon becomes apparent this is really a story about her. It’s these heartfelt and personal entires that are really used to advance the plot.

There are glimpses into the lives of the rest of your family too. Your dad is a struggling author who reviews hi-fi audio and video equipment to get by. Your mom works in forestry as a senior conservationist. The fate of all of these characters is revealed in due time.

What Gone Home should be commended for most, however, is how the game manages to play with our expectations of how these narratives play out.

The Fullbright Company

You arrive at your new family home after midnight, in the dark, in the midst of a terrible storm. There are hints of paranormal activity – books about hauntings, sobbing on the answering machine – and rumours of your mysterious “psycho” uncle. Characters leave cryptic notes, warnings and apologies behind.

Without giving anything away, the way in which the game manages to reconcile all of these horror genre tropes with the overarching story is perhaps its greatest achievement. The outcome of the game is one you might suspect, but not necessarily the one you’re primed to expect.

There is a reason I hesitate to call this a “game” in the traditional sense, and a reason why The Fullbright Company describes Gone Home as a “story exploration video game.” It is a game, in so much as it is 3D rendered and can be played with a controller and has items you collect and a map you can consult, but its core mechanics are simply discovery, exploration, and narrative.

This is a game that some will hold up as forward-thinking evidence in the ongoing debate of games-as-art – but perhaps more accurately, an example of what game makers can achieve when an honest attempt is made to plumb the depths of experience outside of gaming’s typically targeted white, male, youthful core.

If Friday's gains are anything to go by, investors are champing at the bit

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